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THE WHITE PEACOCK
hush of the scythe – even the fretful jar of the mowing-machine. But next day, in the morning, all is still again. The lying
corn is wet, and when you have bound it, and lift the heavy
sheaf to make the stook, the tresses of oats wreathe round each
other and drop mournfully.
As I worked with my friend through the still mornings we
talked endlessly. I would give him the gist of what I knew of
chemistry, and botany, and psychology. Day after day I told
him what the professors had told me; of life, of sex and its
origins; of Schopenhauer and William James. We had been
friends for years, and he was accustomed to my talk. But this
autumn fruited the fi rst crop of intimacy between us. I talked
a great deal of poetry to him, and of rudimentary metaphysics.
He was very good stuff. He had hardly a single dogma, save
that of pleasing himself. Religion was nothing to him. So he
heard all I had to say with an open mind, and understood the
drift of things very rapidly, and quickly made these ideas part
of himself.
We tramped down to dinner with only the clinging warmth
of the sunshine for a coat. In this still, enfolding weather a quiet companionship is very grateful. Autumn creeps through everything. The little damsons in the pudding taste of September, and are fragrant with memory. The voices of those at table
are softer and more reminiscent than at haytime.
Afternoon is all warm and golden. Oat sheaves are lighter;
they whisper to each other as they freely embrace. The long,
stout stubble tinkles as the foot brushes over it; the scent of
the straw is sweet. When the poor, bleached sheaves are lifted
out of the hedge, a spray of nodding wild raspberries is dis-
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
closed, with belated berries ready to drop; among the damp
grass lush blackberries may be discovered. Then one notices
that the last bell hangs from the ragged spire of foxglove. The
talk is of people, an odd book; of one’s hopes – and the future;
of Canada, where work is strenuous, but not life; where the
plains are wide, and one is not lapped in a soft valley, like an
apple that falls in a secluded orchard. The mist steals over the
face of the warm afternoon. The tying-up is all fi nished, and
it only remains to rear up the fallen bundles into shocks. The
sun sinks into a golden glow in the west. The gold turns to red,
the red darkens, like a fi re burning low, the sun disappears
behind the bank of milky mist, purple like the pale bloom on
blue plums, and we put on our coats and go home.
In the evening, when the milking was fi nished, and all the
things fed, then we went out to look at the snares. We wandered on across the stream and up the wild hillside. Our feet
rattled through black patches of devil’s-bit scabius; we skirted a swim of thistle-down, which glistened when the moon
touched it. We stumbled on through wet, coarse grass, over
soft mole-hills and black rabbit-holes. The hills and woods
cast shadows; the pools of mist in the valleys gathered the
moonbeams in cold, shivery light.
We came to an old farm that stood on the level brow of
the hill. The woods swept away from it, leaving a great clearing of what was once cultivated land. The handsome chimneys
of the house, silhouetted against a light sky, drew my admiration. I noticed that there was no light or glow in any window,
though the house had only the width of one room, and though
the night was only at eight o’clock. We looked at the long, im-
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
pressive front. Several of the windows had been bricked in,
giving a pitiful impression of blindness; the places where the
plaster had fallen off the walls showed blacker in the shadow.
We pushed open the gate, and as we walked down the path,
weeds and dead plants brushed our ankles. We looked in at
a window. The room was lighted also by a window from the
other side, through which the moonlight streamed on to the
fl agged fl oor, dirty, littered with paper, and wisps of straw.
The hearth lay in the light, with all its distress of grey ashes,
and piled cinders of burnt paper, and a child’s headless doll,
charred and pitiful. On the border-line of shadow lay a round
fur cap – a game-keeper’s cap. I blamed the moonlight for entering the desolate room; the darkness alone was decent and
reticent. I hated the little roses on the illuminated piece of
wallpaper, I hated that fi reside.
With farmer’s instinct George turned to the outhouse.
The cow-yard startled me. It was a forest of the tallest nettles
I have ever seen – nettles far taller than my six feet. The air
was soddened with the dank scent of nettles. As I followed
George along the obscure brick path, I felt my fl esh creep. But
the buildings, when we entered them, were in splendid condition; they had been restored within a small number of years;
they were well-timbered, neat, and cosy. Here and there we
saw feathers, bits of animal wreckage, even the remnants of
a cat, which we hastily examined by the light of a match. As we
entered the stable there was an ugly noise, and three great rats
half rushed at us and threatened us with their vicious teeth.
I shuddered, and hurried back, stumbling over a bucket, rotten with rust, and so fi lled with weeds that I thought it part
93
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
of the jungle. There was a silence made horrible by the faint
noises that rats and fl ying bats give out. The place was bare of
any vestige of corn or straw or hay, only choked with a growth
of abnormal weeds. When I found myself free in the orchard
I could not stop shivering. There were no apples to be seen
overhead between us and the clear sky. Either the birds had
caused them to fall, when the rabbits had devoured them, or
someone had gathered the crop.
“This,” said George bitterly, “is what the mill will come to.”
“After your time,” I said.
“My time – my time. I shall never have a time. And
I shouldn’t be surprised if Father’s time isn’t short – with rabbits and one thing and another. As it is, we depend on the milkround, and on the carting which I do for the council. You can’t
call it farming. We’re a miserable mixture of farmer, milkman,
greengrocer, and carting contractor. It’s a shabby business.”
“You have to live,” I retorted.
“Yes – but it’s rotten. And Father won’t move – and he
won’t change his methods.”
“Well – what about you?”
“Me! What should I change for? – I’m comfortable at home.
As for my future, it can look after itself, so long as nobody depends on me.”
“Laissez-faire,” said I, smiling.
“This is no laissez-faire,” he replied, glancing round. “This
is pulling the nipple out of your lips, and letting the milk run
away sour. Look there!”
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
Through the thin wall of moonlit mist that slid over the
hillside we could see an army of rabbits bunched up, or hopping a few paces forward, feeding.
We set off at a swinging pace down the hill, scattering the
hosts. As we approached the fence that bounded the Mill fi elds,
he exclaimed, “Hullo!” and hurried forward. I followed him,
and observed the dark fi gure of a man rise from the hedge. It
was a game-keeper. He pretended to be examining his gun. As
we came up he greeted us with a calm “Good evenin’!”
George replied by investigating the little gap in the hedge.
“I’ll trouble you for that snare,” he said.
“Will yer?” answered Annable, a broad, burly, black-faced
fellow. “And I should like ter know what you’re doin’ on th’
wrong side th’ ‘edge?”
“You can see what we’re doing – hand over my snare –
and the rabbit,” said George angrily.
“What rabbit?” said Annable, turning sarcastically to me.
“You know well enough – an’ you can hand it over – or –”
George replied.
“Or what? Spit it out! The sound won’t kill me –” the man
grinned with contempt.
“Hand over here!” said George, stepping up to the man in
a rage.
“Now don’t!” said the keeper, standing stock-still, and looking unmovedly at the proximity of George:
“You’d better get off home – both you an’ ’im. You’ll get
neither snare nor rabbit – see!”
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“We will see!” said George, and he made a sudden move to
get hold of the man’s coat. Instantly he went staggering back
with a heavy blow under the left ear.
“Damn brute!” I ejaculated, bruising my knuckles against
the fellow’s jaw. Then I too found myself sitting dazedly on
the grass, watching the great skirts of his velveteens fl inging
round him as if he had been a demon, as he strode away. I got
up, pressing my chest where I had been struck. George was
lying in the hedge-bottom. I turned him over, and rubbed his
temples, and shook the drenched grass on his face. He opened
his eyes and looked at me, dazed. Then he drew his breath
quickly, and put his hand to his head.
“He – he nearly stunned me,” he said.
“The devil!” I answered.
“I wasn’t ready.”
“No.”
“Did he knock me down?”
“Ay – me too.”
He was silent for some time, sitting limply. Then he
pressed his hand against the back of his head, saying, “My head
does sing!!” He tried to get up, but failed. “Good God – being
knocked into this state by a damned keeper!”
“Come on,” I said, “let’s see if we can’t get indoors.”
“No!” he said quickly, “we needn’t tell them – don’t let
them know.”
I sat thinking of the pain in my own chest, and wishing
I could remember hearing Annable’s jaw smash, and wishing
that my knuckles were more bruised than they were – though
that was bad enough. I got up, and helped George to rise. He
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
swayed, almost pulling me over. But in a while he could walk
unevenly.
“Am I,” he said, “covered with clay and stuff?”
“Not much,” I replied, troubled by the shame and confusion with which he spoke.
“Get it off,” he said, standing still to be cleaned.
I did my best. Then we walked about the fi elds for a time,
gloomy, silent, and sore.
Suddenly, as we went by the pond-side, we were startled by
great, swishing black shadows that swept just above our heads.
The swans were fl ying up for shelter, now that a cold wind
had begun to fret Nethermere. They swung down on to the
glassy millpond, shaking the moonlight in fl ecks across the
deep shadows; the night rang with the clacking of their wings
on the water; the stillness and calm were broken; the moonlight was furrowed and scattered, and broken. The swans, as
they sailed into shadow, were dim, haunting spectres; the wind
found us shivering.
“Don’t – you won’t say anything?” he asked as I was leaving him.
“No.”
“Nothing at all – not to anybody?”
“No.”
“Good night.”
About the end of September, our countryside was alarmed
by the harrying of sheep by strange dogs. One morning, the
squire, going the round of his fi elds as was his custom, to his
grief and horror found two of his sheep torn and dead in the
hedge-bottom, and the rest huddled in a corner swaying about
97
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
in terror, smeared with blood. The squire did not recover his
spirits for days.
There was a report of two grey wolvish dogs. The squire’s
keeper had heard yelping in the fi elds of Dr Collins of the Abbey, about dawn. Three sheep lay soaked in blood when the
labourer went to tend the fl ocks.
Then the farmers took alarm. Lord, of the White House
farm, intended to put his sheep in pen, with his dogs in charge.
It was Saturday, however, and the lads ran off to the little
travelling theatre that had halted at Westwold. While they
sat open-mouthed in the theatre, gloriously nicknamed the
“Blood-Tub”, watching heroes die with much writhing and
heaving, and struggling up to say a word, and collapsing without having said it, six of their silly sheep were slaughtered in
the fi eld. At every house it was inquired’ of the dog; nowhere
had one been loose.
Mr Saxton had some thirty sheep on the Common. George
determined that the easiest thing was for him to sleep out with
them. He built a shelter of hurdles interlaced with brushwood,
and in the sunny afternoon we collected piles of bracken,
browning to the ruddy winter-brown now. He slept there for
a week, but that week aged his mother like a year. She was out
in the cold morning twilight watching, with her apron over
her head, for his approach. She did not rest with the thought
of him out on the Common.
Therefore, on Saturday night he brought down his rugs,
and took up Gyp to watch in his stead. For some time we sat
looking at the stars over the dark hills. Now and then a sheep
coughed, or a rabbit rustled beneath the brambles, and Gyp
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THE WHITE PEACOCK
whined. The mist crept over the grose-bushes, and the webs on
the brambles were white – the devil throws his net over the
blackberries as soon as September’s back is turned, they say.
“I saw two fellows go by with bags and nets,” said George,
as we sat looking out of his little shelter.
“Poachers,” said I. “Did you speak to them?”
“No – they didn’t see me. I was dropping asleep when
a rabbit rushed under the blanket, all of a shiver, and a whippet dog after it. I gave the whippet a punch in the neck, and
he yelped off. The rabbit stopped with me quite a long time –
then it went.”
“How did you feel?”
“I didn’t care. I don’t care much what happens just now. Father could get along without me, and Mother has the children.
I think I shall emigrate.”
“Why didn’t you before?”
“Oh, I don’t know. There are a lot of little comforts and
interests at home that one would miss. Besides, you feel somebody in your own countryside, and you’re nothing in a foreign
part, I expect.”
“But you’re going?”
“What is there to stop here for? The valley is all running
wild and unprofi table. You’ve no freedom for thinking of what
the other folks think of you, and everything round you keeps
the same, and so you can’t change yourself – because everything you look at brings up the same old feeling, and stops
you from feeling fresh things. And what is there that’s worth
anything? – What’s worth having in my life?”
“I thought,” said I, “your comfort was worth having.”
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
He sat still and did not answer.
“What’s shaken you out of your nest?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve not felt the same since that row with
Annable. And Lettie said to me, ‘Here, you can’t live as you
like – in any way or circumstance. You’re like a bit out of those
coloured marble mosaics in the hall, you have to fi t in your
own set, fi t into your own pattern, because you’re put there
from the fi rst. But you don’t want to be like a fi xed bit of a mosaic – you want to fuse into life, and melt and mix with the
rest of folk, to have some things burned out of you – ’ She was
downright serious.”
“Well, you need not believe her. When did you see her?”
“She came down on Wednesday, when I was getting the
apples in the morning. She climbed a tree with me, and there
was a wind, that was why I was getting all the apples, and it
rocked us, me right up at the top, she sitting half-way down
holding the basket. I asked her didn’t she think that free kind
of life was the best, and that was how she answered me.”
“You should have contradicted her.”
“It seemed true. I never thought of it being wrong, in fact.”
“Come – that sounds bad.”
“No – I thought she looked down on us – on our way of
life. I thought she meant I was like a toad in a hole.”
“You should have shown her different.”
“How could I when I could see no different?”
“It strikes me you’re in love.”
He laughed at the idea, saying, “No, but it is rotten to fi nd
that there isn’t a sine thing you have to be proud of.”
“This is a new tune for you.”
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